It's Family Reunion Time

In the summer there are several familial rituals that can be more torturous than Thanksgiving or Christmas, because there is no expectation of fun. I am talking about that age old ritual called the family reunion. Both my family and Hubby’s indulge in staging a family reunion each summer. Generally, my family reunion is an afternoon affair held in the fellowship hall of a local Baptist church. Hubby’s family reunion generally takes place in the deep South, requiring a drive through Georgia, during the hottest part of the summer, and lasts a minimum of 72 hours.

My parents met in university, outside of their local gene pool. (Thank the Lord! I am not joking about this.) Both were the first generation in their family to go to university. My mom is from Eastern Kentucky and my dad from Central Kentucky.

Contrary to popular belief, Kentucky is not a monolithic state. Kentucky has several different geographical regions and each region has a different culture and heritage. Eastern Kentucky is all about coal, with limited flat land for farming. Central Kentucky, on the other hand, is the land of picture postcards of the Bluegrass with colts running wild on gently rolling hills. In Eastern Kentucky, soup beans are pinto. In Central Kentucky, the beans are Great Northern, as only poor people from Eastern Kentucky eat pinto beans.

What is true for both branches of my family is that the roots are most definitely rural. This does not mean, however, that my generation of the family tree is rural. Most of us are college educated and have left rural life behind.

The thing about my family reunion is that my paternal great-grandmother gave birth to 14 children who survived to adulthood. This means that I am related to most of the county where my dad was born, either by blood or by marriage. This also means that there are many people whose names, occupations, and address I have the opportunity to forget or confuse.

I usually take my knitting and observe. It is a lot easier to sit and listen to the stories as most of the people who come are older and have plenty of stories and not enough people to hear them. Some are expert storytellers with a sense of plot and timing. Others are of the more journalistic variety, telling the who, where, what and when without many frills. Still others tells stories of seeming little importance, with little point only that it is something that matters enough to them to pass along to the rest of us.

I realize sitting there that this is the double bladed curse and blessing that has taught me to tell a good story. I have heard the stories of my people longer than I have been knitting, and I have knit for 34 of my 39 years. On my father’s side, those stories are full of who bought which farm – literally and figuratively; years of good harvest and bad; who married whom; who scandalized the family; and the survival of hard times. On my mother’s side, those stories are full of those who lost their lives in the mines; the antics of my jokester uncle; who married whom and why; and the survival of hard times.

Many people believe that in the South we are born storytellers. The truth is that we are not. We learn storytelling from the cradle mainly because we got cable t.v. later than everybody else did. I have noticed that this notion of Southern storytellers may be fading. We have fewer stories to tell and so get a lot less practice than our grandparents.

For my part, however, I strive to keep the stories and storytelling alive one blog at a time.